I was looking for a good laptop with all the standard features and a 15â€screen. And battery life was important too but not too much. I knew that battery life and a big screen did not go hand in hand.
After looking around, I came across the Acer Ferrari 4000 Laptop, which was black with red inserts. And being a Ferrari fan, I didn’t need much more convincing to decide on this laptop.
And since this was based on the new Turion chipset from AMD, I expected at least abt 2-3 hours of battery life, which was good enough for me.
SPECIFICATIONS
AMD Turionâ„¢ 64 Mobile Technology ML-37
(1MB L2 cache, 2.0GHz)
ATI Xpress 200M chipset
100GB* Ultra ATA/100 hard drive at 5400RPM
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) TFT LCD, up to 16.7 million colors
ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X700 graphics, 128MB DDR memory
1 GB DDR333 RAM. (2 x 512MB in two slots. Max memory = 1GB x 2 = 2 GB)
Integrated DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive:
Read – 24X CD-RW, 24X CD-ROM, 24X CD-R, 8X DVD+R, 8X DVD-R, 8X DVD-ROM, 4X DVD+RW, 4X DVD-RW, 3X DVD-RAM, 2.4X DVD+R (double-layer)
Write – 24X CD-R, 8X DVD+R, 8X DVD-R, 4X DVD+RW, 4X DVD-RW, 4X CD-RW, 2.4X DVD+R (double-layer), 2X DVD-RAM
5-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard™, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick®, Memory Stick PRO™ or xD-Picture Card™
Integrated microphone and two speakers
Microphone/line-in and stereo headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF support ports
Intel® AC97 compliant
DC-in
RJ-11 modem
RJ-45 LAN
VGA
DVI-D (digital visual interface-digital)
S-video TV-out
Microphone/line-in
Stereo headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF support
FireWire® (IEEE 1394)
FIR (fast infrared)
Four USB 2.0
Connector for optional ezDock docking station
Type II PC Card slot, 32-bit PC CardBus architecture, Zoomed Video support
5-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard™, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick®, Memory Stick PRO™ or xD-Picture Card™
Acer® InviLink 802.11b/g wireless LAN, Acer® SignalUp technology for enhanced antenna efficiency, WI-FI CERTIFIED™
Gigabit LAN, Wake-on-LAN ready
V.92 56Kbps data/fax modem, PTT (postal, telegraph, telephone) certified in select countries
Bluetooth® wireless PAN
88-key Acer® FineTouch keyboard with five-degree curve, inverted T cursor layout, 2.5mm minimum key travel, international language support
Web browser, e-mail, user-programmable easy-launch buttons; Empowering Key; front-access wireless LED and Bluetooth® buttons
Touchpad with four-way integrated scroll button
Gloss-black optical mouse
14.3" (363.0mm) W x 10.5" (265.7mm) D x 1.2" - 1.4†(30.5mm - 34.3mm) H
6.3 lb. (2.9kg)
90-watt AC adapter
Eight-cell lithium ion battery: up to 3.0 hours life depending on configuration and usage; 2.5 hours recharge time with system off, 3.5 hours with system in use
FIRST IMPRESSION
It looks beautiful. Simple. It has the carbon fibre finish which looks really good. But the only “drawback†I can think of is that it picks up fingerprints too easily. And the accessories we get are STUNNING to say the least.
I got a charger, 4 CDs, one booklet abt XP Professional, one user manual for the laptop, a bluetooth mouse with a USB charger and the accompanying manual.
The Package
Ferrari mouse
The laptop itself
And there is a soft red cloth which is ALSO FERRARI CERTIFIED!!! I mean, how can Ferrari authorize a piece of cloth as being original Ferrari merchandise?? AMAZING!! This soft cloth is used to clean the screen which is described in the manual as a 15.4†WSXGA screen. With a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. But when I reduce the resolution to anything other than 1680 x 1050, it gets very very distorted. But otherwise, the display is crystal clear.
And the moment you start up the computer, there is no standard win XP music. You get the glorious sound of a Ferrari V10 in full flow!! Awesome!!
And the keyboard is in a smiley shape. And it is surrounded by a rubberized coating. All parts of the laptop which are not red or carbon fibre is coated with a rubber like material. It feels really nice.
The keypad
This pic shows the touchpad. It has two buttons and in the centre is a 4-way scroll. The 4 way scroll is very very convenient.
The Front view of the laptop. The blue and red lights are also buttons for enabling and disabling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The blue light indicates Bluetooth and the red light indicates the Wireless LAN.
http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/6859/untitled1copy9pi.jpg
This pic shows the vent for hot air to escape and the Ethernet ports and the port for the regular Dial up 56k modem. It also has another USB port on this side. The extreme right in the pic is the PCMCIA slot. It is not always open and there is a cover for that. When needed, you can open it and insert the card in there. There is also a D-SUB port for connecting an external monitor
This picture shows the slot loading optical drive and and 3 USB ports. The charging port is also next to the optical drive as you can see. The entrance of the optical drive is lined with felt to prevent scratching of the discs that are inserted. It feels really nice to use. Once the disc is half inserted into the drive, it gets drawn in by the laptop. It is basically superb to use.
This pic shows the rear of the laptop. The rear is dominated by the battery, but there's still room for a docking connector, a TV-out port and a DVI output.
And initially, I was taken aback by the lack of a volume control on the side of the laptop. But then, I read the manual and found that the volume can be controlled by pressing the FN(function) key and the up or down arrow keys at the same time.
Similarly, the brightness of the screen can be controlled using the FN key and the right or left keys.
While the volume control is not as simple to use as a simple dial on the side or front of the laptop, it is at least there. And the brightness control is a really nice touch.
And there are the euro and Dollar keys too. While the dollar key is common on all keyboards, the Euro key is somewhat uncommon. But this has it.
And one of the special features abt this laptop (I am sure it is there on all laptops but still…), is that when the CPU is not being utilized, the multiplier drop to 4. So, the CPU speed drops to 200 x 4 = 800 MHz. But at other times, when the CPU is under load, the multiplier increases to 10. This is to save battery life.
When the multiplier is at 10, the voltage is at 1.452V and when the multi drops to 4, the Vcore voltage is only 1.V. This helps in a big way when running on battery to improve the battery life.
The 100 gig hard disk is partitioned into 2 drives. C and D.
MORE PICTURES
The prancing horse when the laptop is open
SYNTHETIC BENCHMARKS
Anyway now onto some benchmarks. Does this Ferrari laptop live up the heritage of the prancing horse??
I first ran 3D MARK 05 and 3D MARK 03. The scores I got was amazing for a laptop. Really good. Almost on par with many desktops with a 6600GT.
But of course, unlike a desktop, I cannot overclock any part of the lappy to improve the performance.
3D MARK 03
I got a score of 6005 in 3D MARK 03.
3D MARK 05
I got a score of 2374 in 3D MARK 05.
3D MARK 01
And a 3D MARK 01 score of 16427 is damn good for a laptop.
AQUAMARK 3
So is an Aquamark 3 score of 44,179.
Sisoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth test
During the memory bandwidth test, I got a max memory bandwidth of 2230MB/s. And while it was lesser than I expected, remember that this is a laptop with DDR33 @ 2.5-3-3-7 timings.
GAMING BENCHMARKS
Far Cry settings ----
FarCry 1024 x 768 x 32 4x AA and all settings like Water settings and everything set to very high
Average FPS --- 35.616
Doom3 at 1024 x 768x32 and 4x AA
Average FPS -- --40.087
And please blame Valve for me not testing this game with Half Life2. But Steam sucks big time and I had no patience to download gigabytes of updates all over again.
SOUND
The sound is integrated with the mobo. And it is a sore disappointment. This is one of the biggest disappointments of the laptop. It is not all that terrible when you compare it to many other laptops available today in the market but when compared to my old Toshiba’s Yamaha sound system, this sucks big time.
And the speakers sound very weak and tinny. And with my experience with other laptops, this is standard. But the main thing why I dislike the sound is that compared to my old Toshiba, this really sucks. And with the Ferrari name, I definitely expected a better sound quality.
I mean, doesn’t a Ferrari engine sound glorious?? I expected the same of the laptop. And for the price we are paying, that is the very least we should have got.
I am thinking of buying an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook for the laptop now.
BATTERY LIFE
I tested the battery life in this way. I put the laptop under the severest of loads. I charged the battery to 100% and switched on Bluetooth and Wireless LAN. And I changed the ATI powerplay settings to run the graphics card at the highest performance setting even when the battery was less than 5%. Under default settings, the graphics is running at half the speed when on battery and then goes into the lowest setting when the battery life goes below 25%.
And as the CPU speed drops to 800MHz when there is no load, I ran PCMark 04, PC Mark 05, 3D MARK03/05, Aquamark3 continuously till the battery drained out.
With so much of load and the GPU and CPU running at 100% all the time the battery lasted for 1hr 45 mins. Which I would say is very good. When the battery came down to abt 5%, I switched off the Bluetooth and immediately, the battery life went up by another 10mins.
But this is not normal usage. This is under full load. And if you were into gaming in a big way, I guess, you will be better off with a Dell XPS Gen 2 :bleh:
And under normal usage, I would put the battery life of this at around 3-3.5hrs. I can say this coz usually, this laptop is used for a stretch of 3-3.5 hrs before being recharged. And after this much of usage, there is still abt 10% remaining.
Some other websites have got a battery life of 178 minutes while watching a DVD movie and a life of 201 minutes running Mobile Mark 05.
So, I would rate the battery life is brilliant for a laptop of this specifications.
CONCLUSION
This laptop beats every other laptop in the market. Be it outright performance, gaming performance, battery life, and everything else except the sound quality.
Yes. It does cost a bit more than similar models from Acer itself. But this also happens to be one of the best looking laptops money can buy. I got this for 2000$ or 88K Rs.
And it does have the irresistible charm of the Prancing Horse from Maranello.
This laptop has been officially launched in India at a price of 99,999/- Rs.
But the Indian spec model is a total letdown. It has 512MB of RAM and 80GB of Hard disk space. And the processor runs at 1.6GHz. It is a Turion ML-30 model.
LOOKS ---------- * * * * *
PERFORMANCE --- * * * * *
BATTERY LIFE--- - * * * *
EASE OF USE -----* * * *
PORTABILITY----- * * * *
SOUND ---------- * *
PROS:
1). Excellent performance
2). Very good battery life.
3). Brilliant screen
4). All functions work as advertised.
5). Front buttons for enabling/disabling WLAN and Bluetooth save you the hassle of going into the software and controlling them.
6). Looks beautiful and every inch a Ferrari.
CONS:
1). Would have liked a manual slider for volume control instead of the FN+up/down arrow keys.
2). The Smiley keyboard takes a bit of getting used to.
3). The sound is a major disappointment.
4). The Carbon Fibre part of the laptop picks up fingerprints very easily. But this is just nitpicking.
After looking around, I came across the Acer Ferrari 4000 Laptop, which was black with red inserts. And being a Ferrari fan, I didn’t need much more convincing to decide on this laptop.
And since this was based on the new Turion chipset from AMD, I expected at least abt 2-3 hours of battery life, which was good enough for me.
SPECIFICATIONS
AMD Turionâ„¢ 64 Mobile Technology ML-37
(1MB L2 cache, 2.0GHz)
ATI Xpress 200M chipset
100GB* Ultra ATA/100 hard drive at 5400RPM
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) TFT LCD, up to 16.7 million colors
ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X700 graphics, 128MB DDR memory
1 GB DDR333 RAM. (2 x 512MB in two slots. Max memory = 1GB x 2 = 2 GB)
Integrated DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive:
Read – 24X CD-RW, 24X CD-ROM, 24X CD-R, 8X DVD+R, 8X DVD-R, 8X DVD-ROM, 4X DVD+RW, 4X DVD-RW, 3X DVD-RAM, 2.4X DVD+R (double-layer)
Write – 24X CD-R, 8X DVD+R, 8X DVD-R, 4X DVD+RW, 4X DVD-RW, 4X CD-RW, 2.4X DVD+R (double-layer), 2X DVD-RAM
5-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard™, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick®, Memory Stick PRO™ or xD-Picture Card™
Integrated microphone and two speakers
Microphone/line-in and stereo headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF support ports
Intel® AC97 compliant
DC-in
RJ-11 modem
RJ-45 LAN
VGA
DVI-D (digital visual interface-digital)
S-video TV-out
Microphone/line-in
Stereo headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF support
FireWire® (IEEE 1394)
FIR (fast infrared)
Four USB 2.0
Connector for optional ezDock docking station
Type II PC Card slot, 32-bit PC CardBus architecture, Zoomed Video support
5-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard™, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick®, Memory Stick PRO™ or xD-Picture Card™
Acer® InviLink 802.11b/g wireless LAN, Acer® SignalUp technology for enhanced antenna efficiency, WI-FI CERTIFIED™
Gigabit LAN, Wake-on-LAN ready
V.92 56Kbps data/fax modem, PTT (postal, telegraph, telephone) certified in select countries
Bluetooth® wireless PAN
88-key Acer® FineTouch keyboard with five-degree curve, inverted T cursor layout, 2.5mm minimum key travel, international language support
Web browser, e-mail, user-programmable easy-launch buttons; Empowering Key; front-access wireless LED and Bluetooth® buttons
Touchpad with four-way integrated scroll button
Gloss-black optical mouse
14.3" (363.0mm) W x 10.5" (265.7mm) D x 1.2" - 1.4†(30.5mm - 34.3mm) H
6.3 lb. (2.9kg)
90-watt AC adapter
Eight-cell lithium ion battery: up to 3.0 hours life depending on configuration and usage; 2.5 hours recharge time with system off, 3.5 hours with system in use
FIRST IMPRESSION
It looks beautiful. Simple. It has the carbon fibre finish which looks really good. But the only “drawback†I can think of is that it picks up fingerprints too easily. And the accessories we get are STUNNING to say the least.
I got a charger, 4 CDs, one booklet abt XP Professional, one user manual for the laptop, a bluetooth mouse with a USB charger and the accompanying manual.
The Package
Ferrari mouse
The laptop itself
And there is a soft red cloth which is ALSO FERRARI CERTIFIED!!! I mean, how can Ferrari authorize a piece of cloth as being original Ferrari merchandise?? AMAZING!! This soft cloth is used to clean the screen which is described in the manual as a 15.4†WSXGA screen. With a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. But when I reduce the resolution to anything other than 1680 x 1050, it gets very very distorted. But otherwise, the display is crystal clear.
And the moment you start up the computer, there is no standard win XP music. You get the glorious sound of a Ferrari V10 in full flow!! Awesome!!
And the keyboard is in a smiley shape. And it is surrounded by a rubberized coating. All parts of the laptop which are not red or carbon fibre is coated with a rubber like material. It feels really nice.
The keypad
This pic shows the touchpad. It has two buttons and in the centre is a 4-way scroll. The 4 way scroll is very very convenient.
The Front view of the laptop. The blue and red lights are also buttons for enabling and disabling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The blue light indicates Bluetooth and the red light indicates the Wireless LAN.
http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/6859/untitled1copy9pi.jpg
This pic shows the vent for hot air to escape and the Ethernet ports and the port for the regular Dial up 56k modem. It also has another USB port on this side. The extreme right in the pic is the PCMCIA slot. It is not always open and there is a cover for that. When needed, you can open it and insert the card in there. There is also a D-SUB port for connecting an external monitor
This picture shows the slot loading optical drive and and 3 USB ports. The charging port is also next to the optical drive as you can see. The entrance of the optical drive is lined with felt to prevent scratching of the discs that are inserted. It feels really nice to use. Once the disc is half inserted into the drive, it gets drawn in by the laptop. It is basically superb to use.
This pic shows the rear of the laptop. The rear is dominated by the battery, but there's still room for a docking connector, a TV-out port and a DVI output.
And initially, I was taken aback by the lack of a volume control on the side of the laptop. But then, I read the manual and found that the volume can be controlled by pressing the FN(function) key and the up or down arrow keys at the same time.
Similarly, the brightness of the screen can be controlled using the FN key and the right or left keys.
While the volume control is not as simple to use as a simple dial on the side or front of the laptop, it is at least there. And the brightness control is a really nice touch.
And there are the euro and Dollar keys too. While the dollar key is common on all keyboards, the Euro key is somewhat uncommon. But this has it.
And one of the special features abt this laptop (I am sure it is there on all laptops but still…), is that when the CPU is not being utilized, the multiplier drop to 4. So, the CPU speed drops to 200 x 4 = 800 MHz. But at other times, when the CPU is under load, the multiplier increases to 10. This is to save battery life.
When the multiplier is at 10, the voltage is at 1.452V and when the multi drops to 4, the Vcore voltage is only 1.V. This helps in a big way when running on battery to improve the battery life.
The 100 gig hard disk is partitioned into 2 drives. C and D.
MORE PICTURES
The prancing horse when the laptop is open
SYNTHETIC BENCHMARKS
Anyway now onto some benchmarks. Does this Ferrari laptop live up the heritage of the prancing horse??
I first ran 3D MARK 05 and 3D MARK 03. The scores I got was amazing for a laptop. Really good. Almost on par with many desktops with a 6600GT.
But of course, unlike a desktop, I cannot overclock any part of the lappy to improve the performance.
3D MARK 03
I got a score of 6005 in 3D MARK 03.
3D MARK 05
I got a score of 2374 in 3D MARK 05.
3D MARK 01
And a 3D MARK 01 score of 16427 is damn good for a laptop.
AQUAMARK 3
So is an Aquamark 3 score of 44,179.
Sisoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth test
During the memory bandwidth test, I got a max memory bandwidth of 2230MB/s. And while it was lesser than I expected, remember that this is a laptop with DDR33 @ 2.5-3-3-7 timings.
GAMING BENCHMARKS
Far Cry settings ----
FarCry 1024 x 768 x 32 4x AA and all settings like Water settings and everything set to very high
Average FPS --- 35.616
Doom3 at 1024 x 768x32 and 4x AA
Average FPS -- --40.087
And please blame Valve for me not testing this game with Half Life2. But Steam sucks big time and I had no patience to download gigabytes of updates all over again.
SOUND
The sound is integrated with the mobo. And it is a sore disappointment. This is one of the biggest disappointments of the laptop. It is not all that terrible when you compare it to many other laptops available today in the market but when compared to my old Toshiba’s Yamaha sound system, this sucks big time.
And the speakers sound very weak and tinny. And with my experience with other laptops, this is standard. But the main thing why I dislike the sound is that compared to my old Toshiba, this really sucks. And with the Ferrari name, I definitely expected a better sound quality.
I mean, doesn’t a Ferrari engine sound glorious?? I expected the same of the laptop. And for the price we are paying, that is the very least we should have got.
I am thinking of buying an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook for the laptop now.
BATTERY LIFE
I tested the battery life in this way. I put the laptop under the severest of loads. I charged the battery to 100% and switched on Bluetooth and Wireless LAN. And I changed the ATI powerplay settings to run the graphics card at the highest performance setting even when the battery was less than 5%. Under default settings, the graphics is running at half the speed when on battery and then goes into the lowest setting when the battery life goes below 25%.
And as the CPU speed drops to 800MHz when there is no load, I ran PCMark 04, PC Mark 05, 3D MARK03/05, Aquamark3 continuously till the battery drained out.
With so much of load and the GPU and CPU running at 100% all the time the battery lasted for 1hr 45 mins. Which I would say is very good. When the battery came down to abt 5%, I switched off the Bluetooth and immediately, the battery life went up by another 10mins.
But this is not normal usage. This is under full load. And if you were into gaming in a big way, I guess, you will be better off with a Dell XPS Gen 2 :bleh:
And under normal usage, I would put the battery life of this at around 3-3.5hrs. I can say this coz usually, this laptop is used for a stretch of 3-3.5 hrs before being recharged. And after this much of usage, there is still abt 10% remaining.
Some other websites have got a battery life of 178 minutes while watching a DVD movie and a life of 201 minutes running Mobile Mark 05.
So, I would rate the battery life is brilliant for a laptop of this specifications.
CONCLUSION
This laptop beats every other laptop in the market. Be it outright performance, gaming performance, battery life, and everything else except the sound quality.
Yes. It does cost a bit more than similar models from Acer itself. But this also happens to be one of the best looking laptops money can buy. I got this for 2000$ or 88K Rs.
And it does have the irresistible charm of the Prancing Horse from Maranello.
This laptop has been officially launched in India at a price of 99,999/- Rs.
But the Indian spec model is a total letdown. It has 512MB of RAM and 80GB of Hard disk space. And the processor runs at 1.6GHz. It is a Turion ML-30 model.
LOOKS ---------- * * * * *
PERFORMANCE --- * * * * *
BATTERY LIFE--- - * * * *
EASE OF USE -----* * * *
PORTABILITY----- * * * *
SOUND ---------- * *
PROS:
1). Excellent performance
2). Very good battery life.
3). Brilliant screen
4). All functions work as advertised.
5). Front buttons for enabling/disabling WLAN and Bluetooth save you the hassle of going into the software and controlling them.
6). Looks beautiful and every inch a Ferrari.
CONS:
1). Would have liked a manual slider for volume control instead of the FN+up/down arrow keys.
2). The Smiley keyboard takes a bit of getting used to.
3). The sound is a major disappointment.
4). The Carbon Fibre part of the laptop picks up fingerprints very easily. But this is just nitpicking.